Fighting to stay afloat on what looks like a sea of chocolate milk, desperation begins to define a Tuesday morning in Thibodaux. My boat shakes uncontrollably, and I feel like a newborn deer learning to walk.

“You might be going swimming, my brother,” says Ernie Savoie. “You have a change of clothes?”

Given the suffocating July heat, an impromptu dip in Bayou Lafourche doesn’t seem like the worst idea. But I didn’t pack for a swim, and with intrusive visions of alligators incoming, I try harder to maintain equilibrium. The more I strain, the worse the boat shakes.

Savoie shouts instructions from a boat launch fronting the campus of Nicholls State University.

“You in a log!” he says. “All you have to do is stay in the middle.”

Savoie, 67, is a carpenter with gray hair that begins as fr

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